US Press Blames George W. Bush for Obama’s Unprecedented Eavesdropping

Jun 6, 2013

RUSH: Have you seen the big news according to the mainstream press? What do you think the big news is in the mainstream press? No, it’s not Verizon. This Verizon story, which we’re gonna get into, by the way, folks, sit tight. I can’t do it all in the opening monologue. This Verizon story — and I don’t think it’s just Verizon. I think that’s just what we know. But it’s broken by the UK Guardian. The American media hasn’t broken a single Obama scandal. The American media hasn’t taken the lead on any of the four major Obama scandals. They’re just playing follow the leader.

Glenn Greenwald is the guy who wrote the story for the UK Guardian, and he got a leak from somewhere in the Justice Department. Somebody in the government had to leak it to him and they probably leaked it to others in the Drive-By Media in this country who are not interested. And, in fact, I wasn’t gonna get into this now, but since Snerdley brought it up, our old buddy, Ron Fournier, the former bureau chief of the AP and White House correspondent, now works at the National Journal.

We have in the Obama administration — there’s nobody even close to the violation of privacy and civil liberties, nobody even close. They can talk about Bush here, but nobody compares to what Obama’s done. In fact, folks, as you know, I read the tech blogs. And I don’t mean to beat you over the head with that, but we have new people tuning into this program each and every day. I’m sorry if some of this is repetitive or redundant, but it’s quite necessary. And in all these tech blogs, they just love Obama.

They have bought the myth. They drink the Kool-Aid that Obama’s the greatest civil libertarian, that Obama’s into privacy, that Obama’s just the greatest liberal that’s ever been — and they can’t believe this. They just can’t believe that Obama would do this! They hated Bush for doing this! They can’t believe that Obama did this. I don’t expect this to change anything, but our buddy Ron Fournier has this Verizon story with the NSA monitoring.

It’s not monitoring. What they’re doing is this: They have demanded that, for three months, Verizon turn over the records of every phone call, what is called the “metadata.” The metadata is the phone numbers, the length of time of each call, who originated the call, but not the contents (supposedly). The contents are not part of what Verizon has to turn over. The metadata is analyzed with very various algorithms. They it put through computer, analyze it, and come up with a data set.

Then if there is anything suspicious, the contents might be subpoenaed or requested. But it is massive. It is every phone call that Verizon handles. Every phone call! If you call Domino’s on your Verizon cell phone, that call is being turned over to the NSA. Every phone call. There’s nothing like this that has ever happened. And the media, they just can’t believe it, either. So our buddy Ron Fournier writes: “Welcome to the Bush-Obama White House — They’re Spying on Us.”

Welcome to “the Bush-Obama Era…” Whose name is first in this story? Bush! And it’s not just Ron Fournier. It’s all over. F. Chuck Todd at NBC says this is all Bush’s fault. If Bush hadn’t been the guy that started this, Obama and Holder would not be doing it themselves. (I kid you not.) “Welcome to the era of Bush-Obama, a 16-year span of US history that will be remembered for an unprecedented erosion of civil liberties and a disregard for transparency.

“On the war against a tactic — terrorism — and its insidious fallout, the United States could have skipped the 2008 election.” We coulda left Bush in, and everything would have been the same. I mean, this is utterly embarrassingly shameless. To bend over backwards or forwards or to pretzel yourself in whatever perverted position is necessary to include George W. Bush in this? But that’s what they’re doing, because it just can’t be Obama’s fault.

It just can’t be!

They think they are Obama. They think they’re the same culture, the same education, the same value system, the same pedigree, the same worldview, the same age. All of it! They think they are Obama, and they wouldn’t do anything like this. So it has to be some hidden, sinister force that is tugging Obama in this direction that’s totally against his own instincts — and it has to be that Bush paved the way to make it possible! Anyway, we’ll have more details on this the program unfolds.

But that’s not the big news in the media. The big news in the media is Paris Jackson has been rushed to the hospital after an apparent suicide attempt, and the Drive-Bys have been exemplary in dropping all the nonsense in the news to give us minute by minute updates even though there aren’t any. Now, if you don’t know who Paris Jackson is, then congratulations. You’re officially a high-information voter.

But since we are in the midst of our outreach to the low-information voter here at the EIB Network, I thought I’d better lead with the news that matters most to them and to the low-information news media. That is that Paris Jackson, Michael’s daughter, tried to commit suicide out in California. But they saved her. She’s okay, and everything is cool.

RUSH: I want to focus on the NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers every day. I don’t know that it’s probably just Verizon, but I’ll tell you what: This is the first time that any of this has come up under the Obama regime. That’s not because Obama hasn’t been doing this.

I have no doubt that Obama has been collecting phone records and data and information on people from the get-go — and I have no doubt because I know liberals, folks. I know how they are. I know what liberalism is. I know that they love exuding power and using it over people. So I have no doubt that Obama has conducted operations like this on a far more massive scale than George Bush ever did. The Drive-By Media today is typified by Ron Fournier’s piece: Oh, my God, look what Obama and Bush have been doing! (In fact Bush’s name appears first in all these stories.) Look what Bush and Obama have been doing! Oh, my God! How can this possibly happen? Bush and Obama!

In fact, grab audio sound bite number three. This is F. Chuck Todd: Unprecedented Obama surveillance is George Bush’s fault. This is from the Today show this morning.

TODD: This is part of a secret surveillance — domestic surveillance — program that was first launched during the Bush administration, and in order to do this court order, the Obama administration is essentially exploiting a part of the highly controversial Patriot Act.

RUSH: It’s all George Bush’s fault! George Bush made Obama do this. These media supporters — these slobbering, slavish devotees of Barack Obama — cannot allow anybody to think that Obama could possibly do this. “That’s not possible! Obama believes in privacy, civil libertarianism. Obama’s a great constitutional scholar. Obama wouldn’t have done this on his own. It had to be that Bush made him do it,” or whatever the thinking is. Here’s the difference, as far as I’m concerned.

Because I, like I say, am convinced that Obama has been doing this at a far grander scale, far more massive scale than Bush ever did. The only difference is that the news media doesn’t care that Obama’s doing it. When you get right down to it, folks, they don’t care that Obama’s doing it. They were scooped on this by a UK newspaper. This exclusive report comes from the UK Guardian, a left-wing rag no less, but it still is a UK newspaper pick up it’s a British newspaper.

Our media have not even bothered to look into what Obama has been doing along these lines for five years. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this leak was shopped to the usual suspects: New York Times, Washington Post, AP. They all probably said, “Nah, we’re not interested,” because of their loyalty to Obama. They’re not gonna do anything to make him look bad. Contrary to what you’re hoping for, it isn’t gonna happen, folks.

They are not going to do it.

The Drive-By Media today is celebrating. I’m telling you, last night they were having cocktail parties or whatever they do celebrating that Obama got away with Benghazi again. That’s what the Susan Rice elevation means. By the way, it also means she can’t ever be called testify on this because she’s part of the executive branch now. So there are no confirmation hearings and she can’t be called to testify.

She’s been paid off, she’s been paid back, and this is a giant FU to the Republicans, and it’s Obama beating the Republicans. That’s all they care about. I’m telling you what inspires and motivates the American left is beating us. The more you make it look like you feel bad over that, the happier they’re gonna be, and the more you hold out hope that the media is gonna turn on Obama and finally see the light? They already see the light. They know who he is.

They are not gonna allow, if they can help it, one negative light to shine on Barack Obama, not if they can help it. I am sure that whoever leaked this called the New York Times. I am sure that they called the Washington Post and the AP, and I’m sure they called the LA Times, and I’m sure they were told, “Not interested,” and that’s how the UK Guardian got it. In any case, we are never going to see the same level of outrage from the Drive-Bys about this that we saw under Bush for similar operations on a far, far smaller scale, folks.

The Bush warrantless wiretaps involved foreign telephone calls. Remember when the left was getting so aggravated over the Bush warrantless wiretaps? They were involving domestic to foreign phone calls and foreign to domestic. The Bush administration was not monitoring domestic phone calls, contrary to what you were told or maybe led to believe. Obama is doing that exact thing. This is every phone call that Verizon handles. Now, they’re telling us, “Don’t worry, it’s just the metadata,” which is the phone numbers of every call, and the length of the call.

“It has nothing about the details of the call, nothing about the content. No, no, no, Mr. Limbaugh! What they’re looking for is spikes. They want to see if a bunch of numbers are called frequently, constantly in large numbers over long periods of time, and then they’ll zero in to find out who was making those calls.” So now what the media is saying along with Obama is, “Hey, this is all to protect you. Don’t sweat it! There nothing to see here. When these kinds of stories have come up about the NSA or phone records in the past under Bush…

This is not collection in the usual spy craft sense of eavesdropping. These phone logs are being used for what’s called “traffic analysis,” metadata. It involves looking for patterns in the data. But the huge number of records is almost certainly unprecedented here, as is the daily monitoring. But here’s the real question: Didn’t Obama tell us that the War on Terror is over? Didn’t he tell us that? (interruption) Yeah, I know we’re not supposed to remember he said that, but, see, I can’t help it; I do.

I have a memory that frightens 24-year-old women. It threatens them.

And he did say it, Al-Qaeda’s on the run. Terrorism is no big deal. Why is he doing this, then? Well, it all started on the day of the Boston bombings. That’s what they’re gonna say it has to do with. But I thought we know everything we have to know about the Boston bombings, that they were not linked to terrorists. They were not linked to Al-Qaeda.

I want to read you something. There happens to be a new book out, ladies and gentlemen, by Eric Schmidt, who is the chairman at Google, cowritten by a man named Jared Cohen. And their book is called The New Digital Age. And in the book Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen basically advocate for this kind of behavior by the government. I’m gonna read to you a review, a brief portion of a review of the Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen book that appeared in the New York Times.

Here is an excerpt of the review of that book. “I have a very different perspective. The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in my book, ‘Cypherpunks.’ But while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in ‘repressive autocracies’ in ‘targeting their citizens,’ they also say governments in ‘open’ democracies will see it as ‘a gift’ enabling them to ‘better respond to citizen and customer concerns.’ In reality, the erosion of individual privacy in the West and the attendant centralization of power make abuses inevitable, moving the ‘good’ societies closer to the ‘bad’ ones.”

That review of the new book by Eric Schmidt from Google is written by Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. Now, just wait just a second. See, this is why I didn’t tell you who wrote it before I quoted from it. You disagree with anything that was said here? Snerdley, do you disagree with anything? The Google guys are in the business of doing what Obama’s doing with Verizon. They’re in the business of scanning your e-mails. They’re in the business of collecting and harvesting data on everybody.

Now, the reason Google does it is for the purposes of targeted advertising. That’s how they earn their money. And if it’s just within that confine, fine and dandy. But then you learn that Eric Schmidt and Google are in bed with every Democrat that they can come into contact with. They’re in bed with Obama. And then you begin to wonder, okay, is Google simply harvesting data for their own advertising purposes, or are they maybe harvesting data for Obama and teaching Obama and the Democrats how to harvest their own data, and we know that Obama’s not harvesting data for advertising sales. What would he want the data for? Well, why did the Clintons have 500 FBI files on people? Nine hundred FBI files.

So here you have Google, which is the largest company of its kind, harvesting everybody’s data, scanning your e-mail. Every time you use a Google app, Google Maps, Google Plus, Google search, every time you use Google Chrome, anything to do with Google, they are harvesting everything you do on it. You use Google mail, they are scanning your e-mails. Now, I don’t want to go off on Google here, but they’re scanning, they’re trying to find data. They claim it’s all being done anonymously, so that they can target advertising, geographically, in terms of interest and so forth, and they are harvesting and collecting reams of it. Okay, all fine and dandy.

But then what happens when they get in bed with Obama? What happens when they get in bed with fellow liberals? What happens when all this turns political? And then what happens when the Google chairman writes a book saying, “Yep, this is perfectly cool, perfectly fine.” That’s why when Julian Assange — I don’t care — whoever wrote the review is actually inconsequential to me. “While Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in ‘repressive autocracies’…”

Schmidt and Cohen are admitting that Third World dictators doing it, that’s bad. But they say that guys like Obama doing it, it’s only gonna improve customer service, like at the IRS. Guys like Obama or any American president doing this and harvesting this kind of data and ending privacy, they’re advocating the end of privacy, the Google chairman is, in his book. Well, that’s gonna help guys like Obama.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Audio sound bite time. I gotta get some of this stuff in here because it’s highly relevant. Let’s start with Barack Obama back on August 1, 2007. This is Obama. He’s Senator Obama. He’s at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Woodrow Wilson, in Obama’s eyes, is a great, great progressive/liberal/socialist president. Then-Senator Obama spoke about his comprehensive strategy to fight global terrorism. I want you to listen to this.

You know, we’ve done this ever since Obama came on the scene as a presidential candidate. We went back and got all of the audio that we played for everybody to tell them exactly who Obama is. He has been exactly who we thought he would be, and here he is again, August 1st, 2007, disagreeing with the Bush administration on the ways that they were fighting the War on Terrorism, and here’s Obama describing how he would do it…

OBAMA 2007: I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining the Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing but protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. It is not who we are.

RUSH: He’s done all that. He’s done all of that in spades. He’s done all of that and more, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s go back to 2005, December 15th. This is on the Senate floor during a debate on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

OBAMA 2005: If someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document — through library books they’ve read and phone calls they’ve made — this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong.

RUSH: And now he’s doing it. But it’s Bush’s fault, you see? “Bush started it, and every president continues what previous presidents started. It isn’t Obama’s fault at all! It really, really isn’t.”